The list is no joke at all. All your bank accounts and bank cards are blocked, and you cannot open new accounts and get new bank cards. No one can transfer money to you. You cannot be employed anywhere. You cannot take out more than 10,000 rubles [approx. 136 euros] in cash per month from own bank account, so go ahead and live high on the hog.

The kicker is that people are placed on the list without a court order. So, you are charged with a crime and you wind up on the list.

I took a glance at the list: there are 8,507 people on it. Eight thousand five hundred and seven people.* The list really does include “5203. Motuznaya, Maria Sergeyevna, born 26.8.1994, Barnaul, Altai Territory.” Maria Motuznaya is the young woman who broke the story about the Center “E” officers and their informers in Altai Territory.

Of course, Rosfinmonitoring could definitely not care less about the laws on personal information. While you are tortured and fined, they quietly hang you out to dry on their list.

By the way, the list is called the “List of Persons about Whom There is Information of Their Involvement in Extremism or Terrorism,” and its URL is even more telling: http://www.fedsfm.ru/documents/terrorists-catalog-portal-act. So, a state agency, Rosfinmonitoring, labels 8,507 people “terrorists” just like that. It is obvious the majority of them have been placed on the list in the absence of a court ruling, because even when you take into account all the “terrorists” the FSB has dreamt up, actual terrorist cases have probably not amounted to a tenth of this number.

If you’ve been added to the list, there’s no going back. The web page containing the list also features a list of people who have been removed from the list: there are fourten such people. I don’t know whether this is the number of people who have been removed from the list since it was established or over the last year. In any case, it is less than 0.2% of 8,507.

It’s probably no coincidence the number of acquittals in Russian courts is roughly the same percentage.

Anyone can end up on the list merely for posting a meme. There is no investigation, no trial, no explanations. Wham! Just like that you’re a “terrorist,” a lowlife excluded from modern society.

It’s a horrible thing.

* Since Mr. Volkov wrote this post, two days ago, Rosfinmonitoring seems to have added another nine people to the list.